The goal of this final presentation is to show off your newfound understanding of statistics by explaining some real-world statistical analysis as if you’re explaining it to someone with no statistics background. You will select some statistical analysis from a reputable source and proceed to explain it in a 5-7 minute prerecorded presentation.
The statistics you choose to explain:
Must be from a reputable source, such as a peer-reviewed article, a government report, or original research from a well know journalism outlet. Note that if you find a news article about a new report or academic study, you cannot use the news article, you must use the original source they are reporting on. If you have any questions about if a source is acceptable, feel free to email me and ask.
Needs to include some inferential statistics. If the study you used includes nothing that you recognize as inferential statistics, you should find another source. If your source only uses descriptive statistics that doesn’t mean its bad in general, just not a good choice for this assignment.
Should be mostly things you understand. There will almost always be types of analysis that you are unfamiliar with, but it will usually be some variation of something we have done already. So if you run into a “nested model” or “fixed effects” you probably won’t understand them fully, but you can look at them and see they are some form of regression analysis. You can explain the parts that we covered in this course, and simply explain that you have not learned what makes this different from what you know. It is fine to say you don’t know. But, if most of the analysis is things you don’t understand then you’re going to struggle.
Should be something you’re interested in. It’ll make the whole process more interesting and easier for you. But if you don’t want to find the time to find something interesting and just want to find the first thing you can then don’t worry, just do what you want.
Your presentation:
Must include both audio and visual components. Whether that’s a video of your voice over a slideshow or a video of you actually giving the presentation, it really doesn’t matter. Your face doesn’t have to be in the video at all if you don’t want it to be. Also if you’re good enough at text-to-speech then I suppose your voice doesn’t have to be in it either, but just know that the lack of expressiveness in a TTS voice will make your presentation far less enjoyable.
Must explain 2-4 statistical concepts that we have covered in this class. If you only cover two, any slight errors or omissions in your presentation will affect your grade more. At least one topic covered must be from module 6 or afterwards, so you cant get away with explaining mean, median, and mode.
Should be between 5 and 7 minutes long. If you know what you’re talking about, 5 minutes is plenty to explain a few statistical concepts. If it is taking you longer than 7 minutes it might indicate that you don’t understand the concepts as well as you think. If you can get everything required done in under 5 minutes, go for it, but you better really have it down.
Should contain an introduction to the analysis you’re covering (what did it do in general?), an explanation of what was done (explain what they did, and the statistical concepts they used), and a conclusion (what was the takeaway from the article, and why is it important to be able to understand the statistics?)
